Burgeoning cruise ship industry in North. (Tourism).

LITTLE CURRENT: Bruce O'Hare still remembers that grey, rainy day in October almost five years ago when 5,000 curious visitors from as far away as Sudbury jammed into the Manitoulin Island Town of Little Current to gawk at the gleaming white hull of a luxury liner.

It was the inaugural visit of the Columbus, a 420-passenger cruise ship filled to the gunnels with German tourists, a spectacle not seen in these parts since the days of great passenger steamships that petered out in the 1950s.

In a town of 1,500 that is economically driven by the summer cottage traffic and recreational boating "it was as busy as the busiest day from summer," remembers O'Hare, a local entrepreneur and owner of the 100-year-old Anchor Bar and Grill.

"It was fairly obvious there was some economic upside to this for the local market."

This same year, 1997, when the Columbus and Le Levant steamed into the North Channel for 13 visits, bands played at the waterfront gazebo, downtown merchants rolled out the red carpet and motor coaches lined up to whisk away passengers on various island excursions.

The excitement surrounding the arrival of the ships began turning wheels in the mind of O'Hare, who spun a business off from this cruising renaissance and called it Lakeshore Excursions, which provides three packaged island excursions.

This year, Hapag-Lloyd's Columbus and the smaller 90-passenger luxury yacht Le Levant will deposit an estimated 2,500 tourists on the town's waterfront, up 25 per cent from 2001.

The industry standard rule of thumb is that the average cruise ship passenger on foreign soil will spend an average of $50 US per day.

Just imagine, says O'Hare, that is the equivalent of about 40 passenger coaches in one day depositing a load of first-time visitors who are eager to spend money in the downtown core.

And the overall cruise ship industry forecast only stands to improve with an ongoing annual growth rate of eight per cent.

"The Great Lakes presents huge advantages," says O'Hare, the area's representative to the Great Lakes Cruising Coalition, an organization of Canadian and American port cities bent on promoting cruise ship tourism.

One of the advantages is "proximity to a market of 50 million consumers within an hour's drive of the lakes," O'Hare says. "It's considered a safe destination (post-Sept. 11) in the minds of tourists, it's good value and there's no air connection-you can drive to us.

Like at most stops, the ships arrive in the morning and depart by evening. O'Hare's company provides an entire day's worth of excursions assembled in three distinct packages, either with a Native Ojibwa cultural tour, a hiking expedition on the spectacular bluffs of the Cup and Saucer trail or a tour of the island's many museums and art galleries.

Realizing the growth potential of the industry, the municipality of Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands (NEMI) has made waterfront development a key issue for future infrastructure and capital investment from the federal and provincial government.

In April, the federal Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans transferred three government docks; including Little Current's dock, to the municipality with a cheque for $1.8 million to dedicate toward future waterfront growth.

The town's waterfront dock space cannot accommodate the deeper draft of larger ships such as the Columbus, which drops anchor in the channel and shuttles passengers in.

"It is not a perfect situation, (and) right now that is a negative" aspect that prevents "this port from going forward," says O'Hare. But both senior levels have "morally committed" millions of dollars for port development.